Especially if cutting their margins caused them to go out of business. Glad we are in agreement on this point. 
-XT
Oh yeah, those endangered oil firms. My heart weeps for them.
The price is already creating a response. Gas is short-tdsrm in elastic but long-term elastic, meaning folks will alter their behaviour, invest in new technologies, etc. My friend wanted to buy a Prius yesterday and called about ten Toyota dealers and found exactly one. And they are selling for above sticker.
It’s Argent Towers.
People could pressure the government to give tax breaks to auto companies that would develop fuel-cell or hybrid cars. They could pressure the government to fund the research of new types of energy - do you seriously think we don’t have the ingenuity to develop better, more efficient kinds of energy, and make it feasible for use in automobiles?
And people could, like the bikers in Mad Max, hijack gas tankers. (I’m not encouraging this.) Is the average salaryman going to do this? No way. Will some criminals do it, and hoard gasoline or sell it to other people in the underground economy and create a black market in gasoline? I think it could happen.
That isn’t true, and you know it. This is a debate, and I’ve been debating, in a civil manner, just like everyone else here.
Americans will get serious about saving fuel right around the time we adopt the metric system.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Exactly.
My immediate reaction was of course they should lower their margins.
No CEO will do this willingly, so the Gov’t would need to step in.
The Gov’t = Bush & Cheney = Oil Men if I am not mistaken.
Therefore, Oil companies will get to collect lots of extra cash at our expense.
**
Methods of retaliation: **
Boycott: won’t work we have to have gas to get where we are going.
Buy energy efficient cars and use more Mass Transit: Bingo, but this will take years to start affecting oil companies to where they would fell a need to reduce margins.
Elect an anti-oil Government: Excellent Idea. That will start taking effect in 2008.
Incidentally, are we to take it that some Americans would actually like to see Europeans drop their fuel taxes to US levels and increase their emissions? Europe could simply race the US to whatever global CO[sub]2[/sub] concentration precipitated tipping into climatic instability, but that would strike me rather like two friends in a canoe approaching dangerous turbulence with one trying to convince the other to stop paddling backwards, relax and embrace his fate as “inevitable”.
I don’t think most American’s care one way or the other what Europeans do. If you wish to have high taxes, knock yourselves out…its your right. Just as its ours to decide on what we think is the appropriate level of taxation, ehe?
Why? They are charging what the market will bear after all. If they weren’t they really would be going out of business. How exactly do you propose MAKING them lower their margins, ehe? Nationalize the entire industry?
Ridiculous. What exactly would Kerry have done to make the oil refiners and distributers lower their margins? What would he have done to make the oil producing companies (mostly foreign) lower THEIR margins? Nationalize the US industries and, what? Tariffs? Military strikes? Bad language? Threaten to come over there and look woodenly at them until they caved in? What?
Yeah, the Green party has a REALLY shot at election in 2008. :dubious: Other than that or perhaps one of the radical US Socialist parties you aren’t going to get anyone who is going to do what it would take to make companies lower their margins. And even if you did, what exactly are you going to do with the foreign producers charging $60/barrel+, ehe?
-XT
Well, it is possible that I could be wrong on the percent for oil…I’ll try to check into that, but my guess is that your number is out-of-date. (The percentage from oil has been dropping pretty steadily over the years, and natural gas has been rising.) I am quite confident of that 20% number for nuclear though.
By the way, the amount of oil used for plastics is pretty small…I think only like a couple percent.
The above is emblematic of the near-complete ignorance shown by most people of of how oil markets work.
-
What percentage of the total turnover of the companies listed is profit? That’s the important figure, not the percentage rise.
-
Both crude and unrefined products are sold in bulk to the highest bidders on an open market. Some is sold for immediate (spot) delivery, some is sold for future delivery. When futures prices are high, as they are now, it’s because the buyers are betting that they will be even higher later on. Like any market, there is some irrationality built in, but it is pretty much impossible for any one entity to control prices paid for petroleum products; there are too many sellers and too many bidders.
Lastly, there is currently no shortage, per se, of gasoline. You’ll know when there is one by the lines at gas stations and the shotgun-wielding cops trying to maintain order. Trying to force the market to sell at artificially-low controlled prices is a pretty good way to ensure such shortages occur.
People, please do just the tiniest bit of research. The Department of Energy web site has lots of detailed, relatively easy-to-read information on how the industry works. Read and learn.
Please reread my entire post and don’t just pick it apart. I think all your points are valid, I was trying and obviously failing to use humor as to why there can be no immediate relief in prices.
Here is a breakdown: Electric Power Monthly - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
Your numbers were much better than mine.
I will look into Plastics use, but let me expand and say non fuel use, Oil is used by Plastics and fertilizers and many other applications.
Ah, I missed you were being funny. Use a smiley for us dense folks in future. 
-XT
Will do, Sorry.
I think we all have different angles on the Fuel Crisis. But I think most of us believe there is no short term solution and we just have to get by.
Considering that the Inupiat Eskimos (the only natives located in ANWR) support drilling, I think it’s a wee bit paternalistic for you liberals to be opposing it on their behalf. These people think their lives and culture would be enhanced by ANWR.
The other tribe of Eskimo that are opposing ANWR don’t even live in the area. They claim, with little scientific evidence, that this will hurt their caribou herds. Interestingly enough, they were all in favor of oil drilling until their land was discovered to have no oil. Furthermore, in general, the calving area of ANWR that the caribou use is not the area being discussed for oil exploration. There may be some slight calving activities near the fringe of it, however. Even if there were significant calving operations, it’s not like that would affect the herds. In fact, it may even help them. Another caribou herd in in the Prudhoe Bay area increased from 5,000 to 32,000 in the years since oil exploration has begun.
All in all, the concern about the caribou is a red herring.
All in all, I’d like to state that global warming is a red herring in this thread too. I don’t believe we can draw conclusions that the approximately 1/2 degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures in the last 100 years is the result of the so-called green house gas effect.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
We’ve been tracking temperatures for less than 100 years.
Our only source of heat is 93 million miles away.
The temperature has gone up by 0.5 C.
Come on people.
First, ANWR. Sure, we can develop ANWR with minimal environmental impact. I’m not sure people realize exactly how big Alaska is, and how much empty wilderness Alaska has. ANWR itself is bigger than the entire state of Pennsylvania. If there was an oil rig in Belgium, but the rest of the country was wilderness, that wouldn’t be much of an environmental impact would it? However, developing ANWR would only affect world oil prices by a miniscule amount, much less than 1%. You wouldn’t even notice it. Sure, eventually we’ll drill in ANWR and the caribou will frolic beside the oil rigs, but don’t expect to get cheap oil from it.
Next, taxes. The last thing we should do is cut oil taxes. In the US oil taxes pay for road maintence. Taxes on gasoline are a very good proxy for road use and road wear. Paying for transportation and road maintence out of general revenues is insane, it would mean that everyone who doesn’t drive is subsidising those who do drive. If anything, taxes on gasoline should be slowly raised over the next few years. And I have no desire to see Europeans cut their gasoline taxes, since that would mean increased demand from Europe, meaning higher gas prices over here. Yes, I’m glad Europeans have high taxes. Thanks guys, I appreciate it.
Next, oil company profits. Demand is up, supply is down. That means higher prices. Yes, we could demand that oil companies sell gasoline at lower prices. For a while. But oil producers sell oil to whoever is willing to pay the highest price. Oil consumers buy oil from whoever is willing to sell at the lowest price. Gasoline prices aren’t being raised by some consipiracy, they are being raised because more people are willing to pay higher prices. If you aren’t willing to pay higher prices stop paying them. Wait, you’re forced to buy gasoline? No you’re not, you just think you are. You could move, you could quit your job, you could ride a bike, you could ride a bus, you could ride a vanpool, you could walk, you could telecommute, you could buy an alternative fuel vehicle, etc etc.
Now, why aren’t alternative fuels available, RIGHT NOW? Because alterative fuels are STILL more costly than gasoline. Yes, you could get a car that runs on hydrogen, or coal, or natural gas, or battery power. Except it will cost more than a conventional car and the fuel will cost more than conventional fuel. Gasoline prices will have to increase even more before alternative fuels become an effective way of saving money.
Next, riots, looting, Mad Max style social breakdown, gasoline black markets, etc. This isn’t going to happen. How exactly would a black market for gasoline get you cheaper gasoline? Gasoline smugglers would have to get their gasoline somewhere. That means they have to buy it. Gasoline black marketeers would have to buy gasoline from the same sources that white market gasoline stations buy from. There’s no way the black market can undercut the legal market unless the legal market is distorted in some way…say by gasoline rationing, or very very very high taxes on gasoline, or if oil imports were forbidden. Yeah, if you could buy gasoline in Mexico for a few pennies and sell it in the US for $3.00 you could make a profit, but you can’t do that because gasoline in Mexico is roughly the same price it is here. If you can buy gasoline from the Saudis, ship it to the US, and sell more cheaply than the corner gas station you aren’t a gasoline smuggling operation, you’re a gasoline distributor. That’s not smuggling, that’s capitalism. The major oil companies make a profit doing this because they’re experts at it. Individual entrepreneurs won’t. This isn’t like cocaine. It’s perfectly legal for a company to start a gasoline distribution system and attempt to make a profit selling gasoline, it isn’t a protected monopoly. If the profits are obscenely high then more companies will begin to do this…grocery stores for instance.
As for gasoline tankers being hijacked? It can happen, but that gasoline isn’t going to be resold retail for below market rates, that’s too risky. Sure, as gasoline prices rise, the value of the cargo in a gasoline tanker rises as well. If the price of gas doubles the value of the gas doubles too. But gasoline is still a bulk commodity, there’s no particular reason to hijack gasoline tankers over bread trucks or moving vans or mail trucks unless the amount of money you get from the cargo is much much greater, you’ve still got to move your stolen goods, which means someone willing to buy the stolen goods and not inform the cops. OK, if the price of gas doubles your gas hijacker makes twice as much. He’s still not going to be making much. Why not stick to robbing liquor stores like all the other criminals? It just doesn’t make sense.
Here is the scoop on electricity production in the U.S. in 2003 from the DOE (on preview I see that some of this is basically redundant with what jrfranchi has linked to, but it adds a little more on context and trends:
(bolding mine)
So, I was pretty much bang-on for everything but the percentage of coal and natural gas…where I overestimated the amount generated by natural gas and underestimated the amount generated by coal.
At any rate, you can see that oil is a minor player in the generation of electricity at 3%.
One could presumably ask the converse question which is what percentage of the total oil we use goes to producing electricity. I am not sure what the answer there is.
Your opinion is completely at odds with the understanding of the vast majority of the scientists who are actually studying this issue. And, the evidence does not just come from the direct fact that such an ~0.7 C warming has occurred. It is based on much more than this, including the basic physics of how the known rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will translate into warmer temperatures along with vast amounts of studies of “detection and attribution” looking at the warming that has occurred and what it can be attributed to.
Read. Learned. I still say these companies are gouging us.
What vast majority? I see a bunch of lefty, socialist, knee-jerk, jump-to-conclusion scientists stating this. REAL scientists know that the Earth has been warming and cooling (remember ice ages?) in cycles right from day one. Do naturally occurring forest fires and volcanoes throw CO2 and other nasty pollutants into the air; you bet they do. The amount that the human race has contributed to the naturally occurring cycles of the Earth is absolutely insignificant. Oil will be gone entirely in perhaps 200 years? The Earth will be around for another 5 billion years.
“Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive. Keep on rockin’ in the free world.” Neil Young